Views of a Freethinker

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People Can Change.

I just returned from a four day airplane enthusiast’s group, the Cessna 150-152 Club. There was camaraderie, laughter, loops, spins and hammerheads.

This would not be noteworthy but for the history of the group. It has not always been so. There were times when the group contained a lot of tension and ill will.

The tension centered on whether or not it was OK to promote Christian views and conservative politics during the gathering and on the club’s very active website discussion. For some reason, a group of members thought the club was the appropriate opportunity to explain the hell that awaits the unbeliever and the terrible things people in the Democratic Party stand for.

I was the first to start complaining about this on the club website. The responses to my complaints were atheists and liberals were becoming too aggressive and since it was only me, I should just keep quiet.

As time went on, more people became emboldened. One set were skeptics like me. Another set were church goers but wanted the club to be about flying, not about religion and politics. Insults and counter insults were the norm.

Ever so slowly, a little light went on in the heads of believers and political conservatives. A voice said, “Gosh, a lot of people here want to discuss airplanes, not religion and politics. Maybe it’s better for the Club if we don’t bring these issues up.”

That’s an old saw often repeated by Christians. One version is there are no atheists in foxholes.

We know it is not true of soldiers in foxholes because there is an organization of foxhole atheists.

As to pilots who go down in planes, there is something factual we know about that as well. It is the most often spoken last words of pilots just before they die in crashes, and, recorded in the black boxes. The most common last words are not, “Help me God (Jesus)!”, or, “Please forgive me God, I now believe.” Of Christians, other faiths and those who do not believe, it is the words, “Oh shit.”

Doubtful 7:30 As I recall, when small planes have to come down away from an airport, someone dies about one of every 20 times. Some of these planes land much faster than a Cessna 150 and decrease chances of a happy ending.

Exactly. There are some rivers and valleys, but mostly I figure if the engine quits it’s get the plane turned into the wind, find spot in a road between farms (reducing chances of overhead electric lines and mail boxes) and set her down. I hope I never have to do that, of course.

Jon, I bet those fly ins are fun. You know I consider myself a fiscal conservative and a social liberal; what a spot to be in. The far right Christians drive me nuts, and I think they turn alot of people, like myself away from the Republican Party.

Upside down and nothing on the clock would be too much reality to even think about anything else. It is one of the common themes that fear will make you a believer, nothing I could say could be more insulting to your faith than that which you say yourself.